


The Ditches and Curves

by romanticalgirl



Series: behind the song [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:05:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>80 miles an hour with a worn out map. A loose sequel to "Innocent as Children"</p><p>Based on the Drive By Trucker's song "The Righteous Path"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ditches and Curves

He stares out the window at the perfect lawn, grass mowed in straight lines and flowers blooming like something on the television. He can hear the kids down the street and the ice cream truck somewhere on the next block. It’s an idyll, and he knows he should be grateful for it. They have the picture perfect lifestyle right down to the two kids and a dog, family portrait over the fireplace that it never quite gets cold enough to light.

Marilee hums in the kitchen, making dinner, and he knows the song though he doesn’t know the words. Sometimes he wants to shake her and tell her to sing the damn lyrics so he can get the tune out of his head, but most of the time he just turns the game up a little louder and pretends it matters to his life that this team wins or that team loses. Instead he really just drinks another beer and watches the cheerleaders, wondering when it’s soon enough to go to bed and start it all over again.

It’s not that he isn’t happy or even unhappy when it comes down to that, if there’s a difference, and he thinks there is. It feels like there should be. His mother-in-law teases him that he’s having a mid-life crisis, and he wonders when she stopped hating him enough to tease, but then he realizes that she still hates him, hates what he’s done, hates what she thinks he made her daughter do. The problem is that this feeling has been around a long time and it’s not about other women or sports cars or sex with strangers. It’s just about life moving at the pace that seems like a standstill, even though the days slip by before he can live them at all.

He still gets news from home in letters and newspaper clippings sent to him by his mother, because family is family even if you’re an embarrassment to the name, a lunk-headed sonovabitch. He knows what happened when they left and before they came back, and he knows what’s happened since they left again, tired of being the bad guys in a drama they never wanted to write. Annette’s still there, still at home, married now to someone better and richer and smarter than he could ever be. He’s happy for her, and happy for himself sometimes, because he’s not the man she thought he was. Not the man he thought he was either, truth be told.

Maybe happiness is all on the outside anyway. Maybe it’s just the things you show the rest of the world that makes up your happiness. The stuff that only you see, the stuff you only show each other is something else entirely. Truth, maybe. He loves Marilee. That’s truth. They have ten years together to prove it with all the bruises and battle scars to mark them off like lines scratched into a jail cell wall. Those things don’t show the tender moments though, the kisses and comfort and slow lovemaking that are like the tendons moving the bones, swinging them in wide circles until they crack and break on stubbornness or anger. 

He thinks about leaving from time to time, running off to somewhere else, though there’s nowhere else he can think to be. Every fantasy and dream seems like something he’s heard Marilee say along the way, so he’s not sure if they’re something he wants or something she wants and has been wishing for. That’s the thought that always draws him up short, when he’s on the way home from work and gassing up the car, wondering how far a full tank will get him. He thinks about her sitting in the house alone, kids at school and dinner thawing in the refrigerator, and he wonders why she doesn’t just run away, wonders where she’d go, wonders if she’s afraid of the same things he is – that it wasn’t her dream after all.

He always drives home, back to the wife and kids and mortgage he can’t quite afford on what he’s making, but glad to have a job with the layoffs running rampant through the plants and factories all around them. And Marilee’s always there, humming under her breath and moving around the kitchen making another picture-perfect dinner from the Betty Crocker Cookbook. Everything’s spotless and ready and he wonders how she managed to find contentment while he settled into routine and just getting by.

He goes to church on Sunday, sitting next to her as she hums along under her breath. He reaches out and takes her hand and feels guilty when she looks at him, surprised. She covers it up with a smile and he squeezes her fingers lightly and realizes he’s never bought her a new ring like he promised, something more than the cheapest thing he could find at the pawn shop on the way out of town. He should buy her a new ring on credit and pay it off for the next five years, mixed in with the other bills he can’t quite afford. One more debt won’t kill him, and it’ll be worth it, he thinks, to see Marilee smile.

After church, the kids are loud in the backseat and the game’s on the radio for the short drive home. Marilee sits beside him, watching the world go by outside her window, watching the neighborhoods decline as they get closer and closer to their house. He glances over before turning down their street and her eyes are closed, and her mouth moves silently, singing the words to a song he knows he knows.


End file.
